Garden of Delights
by Lady Jaida
Summary: Sanzou and Hakkai and a little mistake of Sanzou's... Lots o' yaoi. Definite angst. C&C Onegai~!


I dunno. .o I've been getting more and more into the SanzouxHakkai thing. I like it. Don't hurt me. ( Naturally, I don't like it as much as I like GojyoxHakkai...but I for some reason find it easier to write about. .o ) C&C please!****

Garden Of Delights

i see the lights move on the ceiling  
i see the stars up in the lights  
i see the moonbeams on your forehead there,  
and i think about the garden of delights  


There is nothing but the bed and the both of them in the bed. There is nothing but the bed and the both of them sprawled out, tangled limb with limb together. There is nothing but the bed and the statue they make, still and drained and silent, save for the heavy raggedness of their rhythmic breathing, in time to the other's, riding on the sweat-soaked air. 

Beneath the brunette's cheek there is nothing but the palewarmsweaty breast and the roseblush nub that his tongue finds and adores. Beneath the brunette's cheek there is nothing but that soft marbleflesh breast and the slow and steady thudding of that familiar heartbeat, calming from the fast pace it had learned during the sex just moments before. It is sex because it is not lovemaking because there is not love.

Against the blonde's chest there is nothing but the brunette's face, upturned lightly to the ceiling, eyes closed and who knows what plays along the backs of the lids to his deep green eyes. Against the blonde's chest there is nothing but the brunette's face and the surprising coolness of his flushed cheek, pressed up against his heart beating. 

Wrapped in his arms is nothing but the form that he has come to trust more than he ever wanted to allow himself to. Wrapped in his arms is nothing but the form that he has come to expect to be there, body warm and smelling of sex and of the generic brand soap he uses and of that other simple something the blonde cannot put his finger on. Wrapped in his arms is nothing but the form that he studies one way in the day, in the cool, detached way a museum goer views a statue, and studies yet another in the night, the way an artist studies another piece of art, grows wrapped up in it and sees the colors as if he himself has made them, sees nothing but the colors looped throughout his body and his blood, until they laced deep inside him, pounding through his veins.

In their ears there is nothing but mutual, comfortable, satisfied silence. In their ears there is nothing but the post coital silence that hangs not too heavy and not too light in the air, the medium in which they revel, the halfway point between day and night, the halfway point between both their bodies. In their ears, there is nothing but the silence which does not echo and does not trap, the silence which speaks of things words cannot.

And then there is nothing but the blonde speaking in a weary voice. And then there is nothing but the words which groan out between his lips like a familiar rumble, a little soft groan of pleasure. And then there is nothing but the vastness and the smallness of the words which seem meant for someone else, meant for somewhere else, meant not for his lips to be speaking them. And then there is nothing but the words which are foreign and unfamiliar and leave the both of them silent, only this silence is lurching, uncertain, stumbling along a rocky pathway downwards and downwards where no one can see.

"...'suki da."

  
you see the curtains draped in front of me  
you see the sun come up alone  
you want to show me just what you can see,  
and i, i turn away  


Hakkai is silent. The impersonal way of being together they have cultivated is shattered and maybe, maybe it had been cracked through and through all along. Maybe that trust they had for each other ran too deep for impersonality. Maybe the way they held each other afterwards had been _suki da_ all along and one of them only had to say it. Hakkai would never have. Hakkai would have lost Genjyo Sanzou forever if he had presumed to speak those words and he had never in his life thought to hear the priest speak them. As it was, they staggered forth from his mouth like the shards of something whole and perfect, shattered by the helplessness of the speaker. Genjyo Sanzou had ripped himself apart, open, in half, from his middle and along the middle line and he was lying in bed with Hakkai pressed close to him and his dark angry eyes fixed on the ceiling, furious, looking to blame someone.

So maybe he'd ruined things and maybe he hadn't.

But he didn't want Hakkai to say anything.

That was why Sanzou had always appreciated Hakkai -- not liked, no, never liked. Because Hakkai could read your emotions and Hakkai could understand your moods, and would respect them, would be not so much wary of them as just plain respectful of them, as Hakkai always was of all things. Respectful. Walking around people as he might walk around the edge of a tranquil pond, one only he could appreciate, being oh-so-careful to just observe and never disturb. Hakkai never disturbed.

Only here Hakkai was, past the _do not disturb_ signs, in Sanzou's bed.

Only here Hakkai was, and the sound of Sanzou's words were echoing through his ears, and Sanzou knew it.

"Get out," he said calmly, his arms lifting, simple, just like that. Opening up and pushing him away without having to physically push. Hakkai could take a hint. Hakkai could always read what Sanzou wanted, somehow, some way. It unnerved him. It alarmed him, but he wasn't going to admit that. Hakkai burrowed deep inside of him. Him burrowed deep inside of Hakkai. It was attachment and he refused it, refused it as he refused the path of Enlightenment, refused it because it _was not what he wanted_. 

_Koumyou Sanzou was the man who deserved such things. Koumyou Sanzou was a silhouette on the dark sky and a stain of blood on Sanzou's cheek and nothing else._

So Sanzou did not want it because of two things. 

And the root of it all was, he did not want it because he did not deserve it. Because the man who did deserve it was dead, and he could still see that man's blood on his hands, even as he could still see that man's smiling face.

  
you see my face, you hate my words, i hate you too.  
you see my heart, it likes the feeling that it gets when I'm with you.

  
Instead of waiting for Hakkai to get out, he got out instead. Got the hell out, as one might say, tossing back after him a curse and a scowl. 

He didn't quite know where he was going, naturally, because the things that chased him were not things you could run from. Hakkai would say, you cannot run from anything. Hakkai would say, you cannot run but the whole world is running anyway, as if they can fool whoever it is that's watching them. Whoever it is that knows what it is they're running from, or perhaps whatever it is they're running from, to begin with. Hakkai would say, that's all right, though, ne? Because I'm running too. And then Hakkai would laugh, that little unimportant laugh, and his eyes would flicker away and focus on something else otherworldly behind the blonde, or through the blonde, or maybe inside of him.

The problem was, he liked being with Hakkai. Whether he liked Hakkai or not was a different matter; the simplest thing to admit to himself was yes, he liked to _be_ with him. Polite and unassuming and hidden, and then crying out in his arms, in his bed at night. A good conversationalist, Hakkai. Smart, too, much smarter than all of them. And he hated those rainy nights that Sanzou hated, and he was running too, faster than any one of them could ever hope to run from themselves, far far away from who he was.

And the point, whether he liked Hakkai or not, as he had said he did -- to Hakkai, of all people, the thought made him _ill_ -- was that he had allowed himself to grow attached when he had told himself he never would. Attachment to earthly possessions was a grievous offense -- to himself, that was. Only Hakkai wasn't an earthly possession, was he? He was just Hakkai, and Sanzou was attached. It was impossible not to be, no matter how he fought it, no matter how his violet eyes snapped, purple and violent, with a bruised sort of anger deep inside their achingly cold depths. Hakkai was just Hakkai and Genjyou Sanzou had allowed himself to become attached to the lifeline that ran over the converted youkai's palm, the one that Hakkai would sometimes sit and watch and trace, and then laugh that little laugh over. What the hell was so funny about that lifeline, anyway? It was a joke only Hakkai got.

Life is a sort of joke, isn't it? Hakkai would ask, and Sanzou would grunt back a little 'mh' that meant, shut up, stop talking. But Hakkai never shut up, and not in the way Goku never shut up. Goku whined. Goku annoyed. Hakkai spoke of things softly and complacently, the way Koumyou Sanzou had; he murmured in the most quiet of voices the most important of things.

He had found out quite suddenly that he would not mind listening to Hakkai ramble on about little things, things that seemed so big from Hakkai's lips, forever. If there truly was a heavenly world -- the existence of one was a matter of some controversy in Sanzou's mind -- then for his own purposes, it would be listening to Hakkai turn a subject such as the coming of rain into a sort of sermon. Only it wasn't one of pretenses, it was just the truth, coming from Hakkai's lips. Lips that he kissed, lips that sometimes, just sometimes, absolved him of his sin, and made the weight that he carried too-heavy on his shoulders melt away.

So maybe that was it.

Maybe that crinkle-in-the-corner-of-his-eyes smile was what he liked so much about Hakkai, because it had always been what he liked so much about Koumyou Sanzou. And maybe his voice was what he liked so much, what he had grown attached to, because it was soft and careful and never affrontive, like Koumyou Sanzou's. And maybe all that he spoke of was what he liked so much about him, words that meant more than just words, words that spoke of a sagacity greater than anyone else he'd ever known, could ever hope to know. Just as Koumyou Sanzou's words were.

The point was, he liked things about Hakkai. A lot of things about Hakkai. And that made him frown more, that made him tense and finger the cold metal of his gun and feel angry. At himself, mostly.

You're running, Cho Hakkai would say, soft and quiet so you couldn't get mad at it.

The whole world is running, Koumyou Sanzou would say.

And naturally -- the part that was so damn aggravating it made him want to scream -- they were both right.  


i look right at your eyes, i look right through your eyes.  
i change conversation thought for you.  
i throw a look that you can't catch from far behind,  
and you, you turn away.

  
Hakkai found him shooting late August fireflies in the inn's front yard. 

"You followed me." A grunt. 

A shot.

There was hardly any recoil on that little gun, Hakkai noted. 

"Why the _hell_ did you follow me."

"Because you are purposefully not hitting those fireflies." There was silence. "The whole world is running from something. I do not pretend to be any better. I do not pretend to think we can forget what you said." There was more silence. "I like you as well. Perhaps we can leave it at that, ne?"

The fireflies looked like little flickers of ash and ember from his cigarettes in the darkness. Blinking on and off and endless, a shifting, swirling pattern on the blackish blue of the night. He lowered his gun, returned it to the folds of his robe. Turned his head to the side slightly, watching Hakkai out of the corner of his eye. 

_Koumyou Sanzou fading away from him, in the sunlight. Koumyou Sanzou dying in from of him in the pitch black of night, in the falseness of torchlight in the temple. This weight he put on his shoulders. This burden Hakkai lifted._

//The whole world is running from something.//

"Urusai." He turned to face Cho Hakkai full on in the darkness, and did not even pretend to shoot, tilt the gun at the last second. "You won't hear it again."

"I do not expect to."

"And I won't hear it again?"

"The day that I do, you shall."

"Mh." The silence between them had always been companionable. That was another thing Sanzou liked. The silence had been the silence between two comrades, or friends, if you would have it that way. Sanzou didn't have friends, but he did have Hakkai. He supposed he had Gojyo and Goku as well, but they were different. Sanzou had Hakkai and Hakkai had him all too well. Knew him all too well. There, that was one more thing Sanzou liked, and disliked, too, because it made him just a little uncomfortable.

  
you are my jesus boy, you're laying on a bedly cross,  
i've got you taped up to the wall.  
but really don't feel bad 'cause you do to me all the things i do to you.  
i do to you.

  
"We paid for the bed," Hakkai said amiably, lips curving up. "We might as well make use of it."

And naturally -- the part that was so damn aggravating it made Sanzou want to scream -- Hakkai was right. 

  
i see the lights move on the ceiling,  
i see the stars up in the lights.  
i see the moonbeams on your forehead there  
and i think about the garden of delights. 

  



End file.
